


You Should Go

by CosmoKnott



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 13:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15292848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CosmoKnott/pseuds/CosmoKnott
Summary: Magnus takes the chalice's offer and gets a small amount of time to be with Julia again.





	You Should Go

Magnus blinked. What had he been doing? He looked around, taking in his surroundings to jolt himself back into the moment. 

He was in his carpentry studio. In his hands he held a beautiful dark oak wood rocking chair. Right, he had been working on this for weeks now, sanding the imperfections and nitpicking over the joints and trying to get the scent of lavender just right so as to not be too overwhelming but enough to relax and ease the mind of all worries.

He took a deep breath. Something had been causing him great stress. He wouldn’t have been able to tell you what, though. He must’ve been spacing out and gotten himself worked up about something again. He _had_ just decided to cancel on the opportunity to finally share his great craftsmanship to all the people visiting Neverwinter. It was a fantastic chance to make his name as a master carpenter to the rest of the world, and he threw it away. 

Instead, he had chosen to remain here in Raven’s Roost to stay with his wife and mentor. He had given some excuse about not being proud enough of his work to justify entering it into a competition. It was a gorgeous chair, yes, but it wasn’t an accurate representation of his abilities. At least, that’s what he had told them.

Of course, they had assured him that regardless of what he thought of his work, everyone in Neverwinter would have been blown away by the expert craftsmanship, but still Magnus wouldn’t budge.

He felt he had to stay in Raven’s Roost, but he wasn’t sure why.

Julia entered the room, walking over to Magnus and gently laying a hand on his shoulder. He took one hand off of the chair and placed it on hers. They stood quietly for a few moments, just taking in the scent of sanded wood and lavender.

“I still wish you’d go,” she said quietly.

He smiled. He knew she’d still try to encourage him to go. She never missed the chance to remind him of how proud of him she was in everything that he did. So, naturally, she wanted everyone on the planet to know what an amazing carpenter he was. She might’ve been more excited than he was about going originally.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen if he left today.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, turning to wrap her in his arms. “I think I’d rather stay with you, anyways. We just got married and I’m gonna run off for like, three weeks? Eff that.”

She giggled, pulling herself closer to him and kissing him on the cheek. She rested her head on his shoulder.

“You _have_ to enter next year’s competition then, okay?” she said after a moment’s pause. “I’m sure whatever dope shit you have planned will blow everyone else's asses out of the water.”

He laughed. “Next year for sure,” he promised. She leaned back and he pulled her into a kiss.

“I love you, Magnus.”

“I love you too, Jules.”

* * *

“Magnus!” he heard a voice yell from behind him. He turned and scanned the crowd. He noticed a beautiful elven man waving excitedly at him. By his side a much smaller dwarven man hopped in and out of view, trying to catch sight of Magnus over the people in between them. He waved curiously back, offering them a friendly but confused smile. Did he know these guys?

Julia noticed him waving and turned to see who he was looking at. “New friends?” she asked him, smiling and also giving a wave to the newcomers running up to them, shoving passerby out of their way. The smaller man rested his hands on his knees, panting for breath while the handsome one put his hands on his hips and leaned back to catch a deep breath.

“Phew! I thought we were never gonna get through those douchebags,” he said, indicating the crowd of shoppers behind him. A couple of people shot him a look before moving on. “Mags, we really gotta talk – oh, hi Julia” he added absent-mindedly, finally noticing her. She looked taken aback for a moment before recovering and saying hi back with a pleasant smile.

“I’m just going to go pay for these real quick, okay Maggie?” she said, patting Magnus on the arm and taking her basket of groceries up to the food stand owner.

“Alright,” he grinned and held back a chuckle. He knew she was probably feeling very guilty about not remembering this man’s name and was just making an excuse to get out of an awkward situation.

“’Maggie’?” The dwarf asked with a smirk after Julia left, apparently finally catching his breath. Magnus let out a hearty laugh.

“Yeah, she always calls me that. It’s cute. So uh, I’m sorry gentlemen, but I’m honestly blanking on your names. You guys are…?”

“Oh dip, Merle- he doesn’t remember us at all,” the handsome one said, looking at ‘Merle’ with surprise.

“Huh,” Merle said, stroking his beard thoughtfully and looking at Magnus. “You don’t by any chance remember talking to a chalice lady a couple weeks back, do you?”

“A – a what?” Magnus asked, eyebrows knitting together. The other two exchanged very grave looks. Then the taller guy spoke up again.

“We’re here to - by the way it’s me, hi, Taako. You know, from TV? Anyways, we’re here to – we’ve gotta – hoo boy, I didn’t expect to have to explain all this. Merle, you wanna give it a whirl?”

“You’re gonna saddle me with this shit? I don’t even know where to begin!” Merle exclaimed.

“Right, right, _listen_ ,” he said, turning to face Magnus again, “We really need to talk to you in private for a bit. There’s uh, there’s a lot we’ve gotta catch up on.”

“O…kay,” Magnus said slowly. “Just let me wait for my wife to catch up and then we can talk in a coffee shop or something.” The looks they gave him after he said that were uninterpretable. “I – how do we know you guys again?”

“Again, long story. Guess we’ll explain when Julia gets back. Oh, here she is!”

Julia joined them again at Magnus’ side.

“Hi again, you two!” she greeted them, linking an arm with Magnus’.

He grinned. She was still pretending that she knew who they were and that she definitely hadn’t forgotten their names to avoid looking like an asshole. Once, she had spent three hours in intense conversation with a blind, elderly woman she had never met before because the woman had mistaken her for her daughter.

_“I thought I must have known her and just forgot! I didn’t want to look like a jackass, Magnus!”_

_“Well, you certainly avoided that!” he had said between howls of laughter._

“Julia, this is Merle and T-Tayko?”

“Tah-ko,”

“Taako,” Magnus corrected. “They wanna talk about something with us, I think.”

“It’s pretty urgent, actually,” Merle added.

“Oh! Well, okay,” Julia responded, “We were all done shopping, anyway. Do you two wanna grab lunch with us?”

“That sounds great!” Taako clapped his hands together. “So, what’s good around here, huh?”

* * *

Magnus and Julia sat together on their side of the table. Speaking for what felt like an eternity, Taako had explained everything. After the first hour, he had barely touched his food, prompting Merle to ask if he was going to finish it. After he had declined, Merle finished his plate for him.

Magnus didn’t look at either of them as they continued telling their story. He looked down at his hands, which were clasped firmly in Julia’s. As they talked, his memories had started to come back to him. He remembered the chalice, Refuge, the Relics, The Bureau of Balance, Raven’s Roost… He wasn’t supposed to be here.

It took a minute for him to realize that Taako had gone quiet. He looked up to see Julia looking at him.

“What do you think of all this?” she asked. She looked perplexed.

“I… remember all of it.” As he said that, she gasped.

“I remember everything, Phandalin, saving the train and the people in Neverwinter, preventing the world from turning to crystal, accepting the chalice’s offer in Refuge… I remember all of it. I remember saying goodbye to you and Steven for the last time –“ his voice cracked and he couldn’t finish the thought. She reached up and massaged his shoulder with one hand, squeezing his hand with the other.

“You have to go back.”

He looked at her with astonishment. “If I go back, there won’t be anyone here to stand up to Kalen. Raven’s Roost, everyone living in this part of the town, they’ll all die. And you and Steven – I can’t – I can’t lose you again.”

“But if you don’t, thousands of other people will probably die in our place. I don’t want that, Magnus.” He breathed a shaky breath, looking down and not making eye contact with her. He nodded silently.

After several long, quiet moments, he spoke up again and looked to Merle and Taako. “So, how do we get back to our timeline?”

Taako sat up quickly. While he and Julia had been talking, the other two had stayed respectfully silent. Now they sat upright and leaned in to rejoin the conversation.

“Merle had a pretty good theory – I know, I was surprised too – he thinks that if we just fix the changes you made with the chalice, everything should go back to the way it should be.”

“The relic said that we have to avoid joining the Bureau to avoid causing some sort of time distortion, right?” Merle added. “So, if you let certain events happen by leaving Raven’s Roost and joining the Bureau, we might cause some sort of paradox that causes the timeline to become unstable. Maybe then we’ll end up where we were in Refuge.”

“What if we _don’t_ end up in Refuge?” Magnus interjected.

“Well, we sure as hell can’t stay here!” Merle argued. “If we stay here, the relics will still be out there and the whole world’ll get blown to shit!”

“But how do we even get back to the Bureau of Balance?”

“The – the what?” Julia asked, giving Magnus an odd look.

“The Bureau of Balance is where we used to work that had us gather all of the – oh shit sorry you can’t hear all o’ that, huh?” Taako said to Julia, who only gave him a perplexed look in return. “Er, well, we work for a… an organization… that stops things like the chalice from destroying the world. Did you hear all that or did I static out again?”

“I – yeah, I heard that time. So you just have to get back to Phandalin when it gets destroyed in order to intercept the transportation that’ll get you to your old job?”

In telling Magnus and Julia the story, Taako and Merle had tried to be very careful in not using any terminology that had been stolen by the Voidfish. They had only screwed up a couple of times, which had revealed that, interestingly enough, Magnus could hear and understand what they were saying but Julia could not.

“I guess so? Yeah, yeah that sounds good,” Merle said, stroking his beard again.

“Sounds like we’ve got ourselves a plan, my dudes,’ Taako said. Merle and I are gonna wait for you guys outside, so catch up with us whenever you’re ready, ‘kay? It was nice to meet ya, Julia.” With that, Merle and Taako quickly got up and left the table, heading towards the exit of the restaurant.

Magnus allowed himself a small smile, knowing that they were trying to give him some alone time with Julia. Except, wait –

“Hey!” he called after them. “You didn’t pay!”

“Currency doesn’t matter in a defunct timeline, homie!” Magnus heard Taako call through the closing doorway.

Magnus rolled his eyes and looked at Julia, who giggled.

“So, uh,” she began, “You’ve gotta get going pretty soon, huh?”

Magnus bit his lip and turned his eyes toward the ceiling. She pulled him in and enveloped him in one of her signature bear hugs. As he shook with sobs, she rubbed his back and whispered, “It’s okay,” over and over in his ear.

After several minutes, he picked his head up off her shoulder and pressed his forehead to hers.

“I can’t – I can’t do this, Jules,” he said finally.

“You _can_ , Magnus. You’re going to go back to your timeline, and you’re going to do amazing things. You’re going to help so many people. All those stories Taako and Merle told about you? Honey, you’re _incredible_. I always knew you were a hero,” she smiled.

He laughed and shook his head. She wiped a tear from his eye and held his face in her hands.

“I know you. You won’t stand by while other people are suffering. I know you can do this. Go be with your friends. Go save the world.”

He looked into her eyes for a few more moments and then, nodding, he gathered up his things and stood up. She joined him and, taking her hands in his, he said the last thing that he would ever say to her:

“I love you, Jules.”

“I love you too, Mags. So much.”

Trying not to start crying again, and trying very hard to burn this scene into his brain so that he could never forget it, he pulled her in for one final kiss. After a few seconds he broke away, and they joined the other two outside.

“Ready to go, Mags?” Merle asked, noticing them before Taako did. He either hadn’t noticed Magnus’ red and puffy eyes or – in rare form – decided to refrain from making fun of him for it.

Magnus took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

Walking away, Taako turned to wave goodbye to Julia who was still standing by the door.

“Well uh, guess this is goodbye,” he said.

“Yeah, uh, sorry we didn’t get a better chance to get to know ya better,” Merle added.

“It was nice to meet you two. Take care of Maggie for me, please.”

“Sure thing,” Taako said, definitely not getting choked up.

They waved goodbye to Julia and took off towards Phandalin, Julia watching them until they were out of sight. She turned and began walking home. On the way, she ran into Steven.

“Julia! Where’s Magnus? I wanted to try giving another go at talking him into going to the competition, since there’s still time and all…”

“Actually, Steven? He just left. Think I managed to make him change his mind, after all.”

“No shit! Well, good for you! They’re gonna be blown away by his craftsmanship. I think he’s going to be amazing.”

“Yeah,” she smiled. “I think so too.”

**Author's Note:**

> My writing's definitely rough around the edges, and I haven't really written any fanfic since middle school, but I hope you enjoyed my first attempt to get back into it! This was really only supposed to be a paragraph long but turned into 5-6 pages. I love these two to death and really wanna see more stuff with them.


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